This is a source, archive and place to discuss Journalism and PR. Hopefully it will address questions on the nature of news, the role of journalism in our view of the world and the impact of PR on the news agenda. Do we get the news we deserve? Or the news we need to know? This isn't just a site for paranoid academics or their students - contributions are also welcome from professionals in journalism and PR or anyone with something to say about the world as presented through the headlines.

Monday, November 05, 2007

Brass Tack #5 - Tell the story simply

‘The news’ may present itself as a reliable and factual account of what is happening out there in the ‘real world’. However, news items tend to be short pieces of information that are easy to consume and understand and it is clearly impossible for such an item to reproduce ‘reality’ with all its complexities, contexts and interpretative nuances.

Therefore, what the news actually does is to tell isolated, fragmented stories of events that have happened / are happening and then leaves it to its readers, viewers and listeners to make sense of it, discuss it or ignore it.

This means that if you want your story to become news, you must find a simple way of telling it. To achieve this, one piece of advice that is most frequently given is to ensure that the story provides answers to the five W questions: What’s happening? Who’s involved? Where? When? and Why? (Other accounts also slip in an H for How?)

In theory, this means it is possible to tell the story in one or two sentences:

What happened?) A toddler was rescued from a well (Who?) by a passing dog walker (Where?) in the grounds of Hockley Hall(When?) last night (Why?) after a game of hide-and-seekwent drastically wrong.

Clearly, in this example, more details are needed to ‘flesh out’ the story from these ‘bare bones’ – but that’s how news stories work. While a detective story writer might leave it to the last page before revealing ‘whodunnit’, a journalist often starts with the punch line and then fills out the story with detail, context, background, quotes, with each paragraph providing more and more redundant information. If you don’t believe me, ask Walter Cronkite.

This isn’t because journalists are backward-thinking people. It’s to make life easy for sub-editors who may want to reduce a 200-word story to 175 words to fit the space on the page. Rather than re-write the story, all they have to do is lop off the last couple of paragraphs and the story will still make sense.

There’s a further practical benefit for a press release that can get the 5Ws across in the first sentence or two before ‘filling out’ the story: it doesn’t take more than a few seconds to impress the editor that here’s a story worth covering.

A good press release works in much the same way as a good CV. It shouldn’t be more than two sides of A4 and if it fails to impress in the top half of the first side, the rest of it won’t get read.

First the fabric is folded- and there are different techniques to folding, depending on how you want your pattern to unfold. Then wooden blocks are placed above and below the folded fabric and held in place by these industrial looking clamps.

A few months ago I met with the folks at PixelKraft to talk about getting an online store done for Brass Tacks. I quickly realized during my conversation with them that they had some valuable suggestions and feedback about Brass Tacks as a brand; in particular the branding and positioning with relation to the product.Brass Tacks was always meant to be a line of well-cut, well-designed clothes that fit easily into women's every day lives. It's probably my own limitations as a designer that after starting Brass Tacks I stopped thinking about other work environments, and what women need for their daily activity (you see, I do get to wear dhoti pants and a tank top to work every day)! But I'm back on track, listening carefully to customer feedback and keeping a close watch on the market without losing track of the brand philosophy.

If the Lincoln Theater debacle has taught us anything about "saving" historic theaters, it's that it's an expensive proposition ripe for the sort of nepotism that's made the District Government a laughingstock. If DC wants to blow a couple hundred mil on restoring the Ontario and staffing the Board of Directors with a bunch of handpicked overpaid lackeys who will keep it dark 9 months out of the year, more power to you. Sure, everybody would like a theater in their neighborhood. I'd like a prehensile penis, but I'm not prepared to pay the price for the plane ticket to Thailand

You should report to the court at the date and time shown on your jury summons. At that time, you will be told the procedure for reporting to the court for the rest of the term and the court’s normal business hours. On days that you report for jury service, you can expect to be at the court during its normal hours. If not selected for a jury, you may be able to leave early. Jurors will be given a lunch break and may be given other breaks during a trial. On occasion, a trial will continue beyond the court’s normal working hours. If this happens, you may need to arrange your schedule to allow you to stay longer.

Later, while discussing the disaster of the meeting with NBC, George focuses on starting a relationship with the one female executive, Susan Ross. When George later brings her to Jerry's apartment, Kramer drinks spoiled milk and vomits on her. Crazy Joe Davola, upset at not being invited to Kramer's party, attacks Kramer, kicking him in the head. However, Kramer was wearing Newman's helmet at the time, which saves him any visible injury. When Kramer tells Jerry this, he warns him that Davola says he will be looking for Jerry as well

To illustrate – as long as people are happy to consume Golden Munchie Burgers, the company that produces them will continue to wipe out areas of rainforest the size of Warwickshire on a weekly basis to produce grazing land for methane-producing cattle in order to ensure a steady supply of beef (and other derivatives).

As soon as we pull up outside the University of Portsmouth, I can see the look of astonishment on the face of the Vice Chancellor. The streets are full of rain. Poor bedraggled students splash across the campus in search of their lectures in feminism and media studies.

That’s what sub-editors are trained to do. All you need to do is provide then with a blank canvas to work on - a simple headline that makes it abundantly clear what the story is about, e.g. ‘Pupils raise funds for school swimming pool’, and leave it to the subs to come up with ‘Students splash out’.

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